Portfolio Hasancan Cifci British Language Assistant in Madrid, Spain 1 Background Going into my first year as a Language assistant I wanted to keep a record of my time to be able to better learn and grow from my experience. For this reason I decided to start a blog for my personal use. From here I could evaluate which teaching techniques worked and how I can incorporate these more so in the future. Personal growth and learning is very important to me and it is often the driving force behind my personal interests. Activities such as boxing and climbing require dedication and a level of specialised critical thinking to aid with progression. Punching combinations and footwork in boxing require intense concentration for minutes at a time. Finding ways to make this easier can be challenging and so improving in these sports requires a lot of internal deliberation. I had a few expectations about the teaching programme, one being the idea that I was going to be leading classes frequently. This was not the case, although it does happen sometimes where I present something about a holiday or topic. My time teaching has revolved around teaching children on a more individual basis, but this has allowed me to have a greater understanding of each child’s strengths and weaknesses. This coupled with the fact that I am only in a single grade group due to covid, I have a good understanding of how to help the children most effectively in certain situations. The School: Fontarron Public School The school is a very wholesome and calming environment. As well being a bilingual school, Fontarron specialises in helping children with disabilities, physical or otherwise. Because of this, I feel the children grow up with a stronger sense of community and compassion. I have seen countless times different children assisting a child in a wheelchair without being requested to do so. The school is also very well run and there are many systems in place to assist with learning but also for smooth operation of things. Although there is a clear budgetary issue within the school, with things such as bad internet access being a recurring issue, the staff definitely work around these problems to provide a great level of teaching to the students. Personal Experience As mentioned before I only teach one grade group, grade 1. This has definitely been a fun and rewarding experience. Over the last 3-4 months I have seen the students improve vastly from their levels at the start of the year. I see a greater level of comprehension when 2 it comes to english activities and this means the level of learning is going to grow faster and faster. At the start it was very challenging due to the lack of schooling these young children had received during the first outbreak of the coronavirus. For that reason it has almost been a race to get through missed content as well getting through the intended material for 1st graders. Having done a sufficient amount of this work I feel a lot calmer about the progress the children have made however this is something that has to be put in consideration for the duration of these children being in elementary school. Predominantly I was assisting in natural science, english, music, physical education and the occasional geography class. Although I have university experience with maths I do not think my involvement in these classes would have made a big difference due to the level and age of the children. Apart from helping children in class, I would often take children out of the class for about 10-15 minutes at a time. These little classes would be used to help the children struggling with a particular topic. I would do this through writing words on a white board and asking the students to answer questions about the word or simply read the word. I also frequently used visual aides, and this was by far the best way for the children to learn. For that reason whenever I was asked to make a presentation, I made sure to use a lot of images. These presentations will be linked on my website and also at the end of this portfolio. Highlights as a Language Assistant I. As simple as this sounds, when I managed to remember all of the childrens’ names and they remembered mine, I felt it was much easier to teach them as a whole. II. Helping a child with a mental disability and watching them become more involved within the classes as their level of English, and even Spanish, improved with time. This felt immensely rewarding as I could see the child being happier during the classes. III. The attitude of a “slightly” disruptive student changing towards me meant that I went from a position where I was not being listened to, to one where the child was coming to me for help. Conclusion My time as an LA has been extremely rewarding and has meant I have been able to grow as a person and improve my teaching and communication skills. Talking to children and engaging them is a hard task to do every day, but through the help of my fellow teachers as well as self reflection, the level of teaching I can provide to students is improving. 3 Presentations: 1. Personal introduction- https://pdfhost.io/v/rxSuZIaQt_Presentation_about_mepdf.pdf 2. Halloween- https://pdfhost.io/v/~ZoFhxMvN_Presentacin_de_PowerPoint.pdf 3. Body Parts- https://pdfhost.io/v/ItU5voOYe_CHEST.pdf 4. Thanksgiving- https://pdfhost.io/v/ldBl~~MSm_Thanksgiving.pdf